title: Documentation
parent: Home
menu: 4
---

# Documentation

## Basics

The main Nagios Plugins documentation is split into two parts:

1. **[Manual Pages][man]**  
   This part provides documentation for each individual plugin.

2. **[FAQ][faq]**  
   The FAQ section offers additional information on the Nagios Plugins
   package as a whole.

## Advanced Topics

These documents cover specific topics that go beyond the basics:

* **[Extra-Opts][extra-opts]**  
  Telling plugins to read options from a configuration file.

* **[Writing Perl Plugins][perl-plugins]**  
  This is a video that shows how to write your own check using the
  [Nagios::Plugin][module] Perl module.

* **[Nagios Plugin Development Guidelines][guidelines]**  
  Reference documentation for plugin developers.

## Proposals

The following ideas are not yet implemented (and might never be):

* **[New Specification Method for Thresholds][new-threshold]**  
  A different way of specifying thresholds on the command line.

* **[Check Aggregation: check\_many][check-many]**  
  A plugin wrapper allowing aggregation and serialization of multiple checks.

* **[State Retention Routines][retention-rfc]**  
  Saving state information between plugin invocations.  This is actually
  [implemented][retention-api] by now.

[man]: doc/man/index.html "Manual Pages"
[faq]: doc/faq/index.html "Frequently Asked Questions"
[extra-opts]: doc/extra-opts.html "Extra-Opts"
[perl-plugins]: doc/writing-perl-plugins.html "Nagios::Plugin Presentation"
[module]: http://search.cpan.org/dist/Nagios-Plugin/ "Nagios::Plugin"
[guidelines]: doc/guidelines.html "Nagios Plugin Development Guidelines"
[new-threshold]: doc/new-threshold-syntax.html "Proposal for New Threshold Syntax"
[check-many]: doc/check-many.html "Proposal for Check Aggregation Plugin"
[retention-rfc]: doc/state-retention.html "Proposal for State Retention Routines"
[retention-api]: doc/faq/private-c-api.html#state-information "State Retention API"

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